Spatial Justice: Derivative but Causal of Social Injustice

1/2009 Spatial Justice: Derivative but Causal of Social Injustice Peter MARCUSE “Spatial justice is the ultimate goal of many planning policies,” says the manifesto of this new journal. It is a true statement, as an empirical fact; one might even hope that it would further be true that “spatial justice is part of the goal of every planning policy.” But either statement raises at least two questions: 1) what is spatial justice, and more generally, what is its relation to social justice. And 2) what remedies are there for spatial and social injustices that we would wish planning to adopt. I will take the first (what is justice and what is its role in planning) in the context of a forthcoming book1, and the second (the role of space) in the context of issues I am struggling with some time, under the title: putting space in its place. What is justice? What is its role in planning? There is an on-going discussion, in the United States and elsewhere, on the concept of the Just City as the ultimate goal of planning: the ultimate goal, not only one goal among others, and of all planning, not only of many plans. Susan Fainstein was one of those that has pressed this idea of the Just City for some time, and in the spring of 2006 we held a conference on that theme at Columbia University2, with a number of interesting contributions, which a group of doctoral students in our program are editing in volume to be called: Searching for the Just City, which Routledge will publish this spring. The Introduction, by James Connolly Ingrid Olivo, and Justin Steil, three of the editors, reviews the status of the Just City debate, and the lead essay is by Fainstein. It opens with a discussion of “what is justice,” with all the usual suspects: John Rawls, John Stuart Mill, Iris-Marion Young, and Martha Nussbaum, whom Fainstein favors. Her opening essay takes up a specific case: that of New York City’s pre-emption of a large wholesale food market in the Bronx, run largely by immigrants and in the center of a poor and working class community, by a major developer in the city with good political ties who will construct a large shopping mall on the site. David Harvey follows with a piece, on which Cuz Potter, another of the editors, collaborated. He argues that injustice is so integral to the capitalist system, a system fundamentally unjust in itself, that any attempt to achieve a Just City within the bounds of capitalism is doomed to failure. He argues that the problem for planners is not the philosophical definition of justice, but rather the specific historical analysis of the neo-liberal phase of capitalism which today is responsible for obvious and manifold injustices. Harvey contends therefore that a concept of justice in a Just city that assumes that justice is achievable within a capitalist society, and that does not address the need for structural change in that society, is inadequate. Given the triumph of neo-liberalism today, he argues that direct confrontation with its underlying political economy is needed, and suggests “dialectical urbanism” as a better approach. 1 Marcuse P., Connolly J., Novy J., Olivo I., Potter C., Steil J. (dir.), Searching for the Just City: Debates in Urban Theory and Practice, Routledge, (à paraître en mai 2009). 2 « Searching for the Just City » Conference, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, 29 avril 2006. 1 1/2009 I have an article in the book also, in which I argue that distributive justice is a necessary but not sufficient aspect of a normative pitch in planning, which is badly needed. But, while necessary and needing buttressing, it fails to address the causes of injustice, which are structural and lie in the role of power. The Just City sees justice as a distributional issue, and aims at some form of equality. But a good city should not be simply a city with distributional equity, but one that supports the full development of each individual and of all individuals, a classic formulation. I argue that such a concept should lead to a recognition of the importance of utopian thinking but as well to the direct confrontation with issues of power in society. I use the jingle about the Goose and the Commons, from 16th century England: - The law locks up the man or woman - Who steals a goose from off the common, - But leaves the greater villain loose - Who steals the common from the goose - And I use it to argue, not for planning to deal with goose, but for Commons Planning, to deal with the underlying common social problem. Margit Mayer, with Johannes Novy, argues from a European perspective that the Just City concept is peculiarly American, and developed in the context of United States neo-liberal policies, and must be read differently – and the role of justice as a concept read differently – in the social movement battles around welfare and urban policies in most European countries. Setha Low deals with public space as revealing some of the issues of injustice in the urban setting, and argues that justice needs to include, not only the distribution of material goods, but also interactional quality and procedural democracy as desiderata. Greta Goldberg introduces the concept of care, and argues it should be added to the discussion of the Just City and that planners and other social actors should strive for a Just Caring City. Justice and care are often seen as dichotomies. Justice is signified by universal rules, regulations, autonomy and impartiality, while an ethic of care employs partiality, locality, situationality, contextuality and the fostering and maintenance of relationships as its guiding principles. She uses examples from the field of biomedical ethics where a synthesis of justice and care has been adopted in practice and professional standards James de Filippis brings in the question of scale and the relation of globalization to injustice in the city, and uses as an example struggles of community activists to deal with economic injustice. Oren Yiftachel and Haim Yacobi introduce the concept of 'gray urbanism', referring to the increasingly conspicuous sections of urban population, who are denied full membership in city affairs and resources, and speaks of “centripetal apartheid.” He illustrates is points with case studies of Bedouins in Beer Sheva and migrant workers in Jerusalem. Laura Wolf-Powers presents case studies of urban injustice in New York City, Justin Steil and James Connolly use the cases of brownfields development in the same city, issues involving the re-use of polluted sites of manufacturing plants which have ceased operations. Phil Thompson raises the very contemporary issue of injustice in the treatment of New Orleans residents after hurricane Katrina. And Ingrid Olivo applies the concepts of the Just City discussion to the treatment of cultural heritage in addressing cultural heritage as a politicized endeavor, instead of the traditional, isolated and limiting technical area of expertise. 2 1/2009 In a Postscript, I argue that the next step in searching for a Just City is developing the idea and the practice envisioned in Lefebvre’s Right to the City, with examples. So: a book illustrating a variety of ways of approaching the issue of justice in the urban setting. It ends with a conclusion, the first part of which, by Cuz Potter and Johannes Novy, summarizes the main themes of the book, and the second part of which raises the question of “where do we go from here” to make the concept of the Just City actually useful, both as an analytic concept and as a political tool, in the real world today. Putting space in its place That is the question I want to raise now. I want to do it by returning to the second question I raised at the opening of this text: what is the relation of space to justice, and are there goals of planning policies that are not spatial? Putting Space in its Place, is the topic; what is the role of space in dealing with injustice. Let me suggest five propositions to lead from a more theoretical analysis to some concrete approaches and to action. On the first three I think there will be general agreement; the fourth may be less commonly recognized. I. There are two cardinal forms of spatial injustice: A.The involuntary confinement of any group to a limited space – segregation, ghettoization – the unfreedom argument. B. The allocation of resources unequally over space –the unfair resources argument. II. Spatial injustice is derivative of broader social injustice –the derivative argument. III. Social injustices always have a spatial aspect, and social injustices cannot be addressed without also addressing their spatial aspect – the spatial remedies argument. IV. Spatial remedies are necessary but not sufficient to remedy spatial injustices – let alone social injustice – the partial remedy argument. V. The role of spatial injustice relative to social injustice is dependent on changing social, political, and economic conditions, and today there are trends that tend both to decrease and to increase the importance of the spatial – the historical embeddedness argument. I will take them one at a time. I. There are two cardinal forms of spatial injustice: A. The involuntary confinement of any group to a limited space – segregation, ghettoization – the unfreedom argument. Frequently we use statistics as a measure of ghettoization, but that ignores the difference between a ghetto and an enclave. A group that wishes to live together and does so voluntarily is not ghettoized, not segregated, not being treated unjustly when it is allowed to cluster.

Load more